Please avoid opening sentences like these:
“X is such an important part of society today”
“In today’s society, x are popularly consumed”
These sentences are born of desperation and cowardice, and we hates them forever.
Archive for October, 2009
Festival of Bad Writing, Fall 2009 entries
Posted in Festival of Bad Writing, Musing about Teaching, tactless observations, tagged in today's society, society today on 28 October, 2009 | 1 Comment »
What year are we in again?
Posted in Backstory, tactless observations, tagged Anglicans, civilized discourse, ecumenism fail, polite dissent, Pope, Randy Cohen, talking about religion, The Ethicist, Tiber on 27 October, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I sometimes think that modern organized religion is more defined by who is kept out than who is allowed in. Is there a particular sort of Heaven or Hell that gets described? Are there particular sorts of people who will never trouble you again? I’m sure it shows my intellectual bias that my idea of [...]
Leia’s mousie
Posted in Backstory, cats, tactless observations on 21 October, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Somewhat civilized Himmie turns out to be a fine mouser. She darted past Malkin and grabbed herself a mousie from behind the bookshelf.
Fortunately, she did not decide to gut it in my office or on the bed, or in the stairwell. She dropped it, it tried to hide underneath her, and I grabbed it in [...]
Exasperation
Posted in Backstory, tactless observations, tagged 1541, not _that_ calvin and hobbes, polysyllabic speech, Presbyterianism, religion on 18 October, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Some religious traditions do a better job of keeping their history alive than others. While being reminded of every significant activity that ever happened on a particular date strikes me as perhaps oppressive, I really am having problems with the ahistoricism of the church I nominally attend.
Honestly — our take on the Gospels goes back [...]
Brave new phrases
Posted in Art and Craft, Festival of Bad Writing, Language failure, Musing about Teaching, My brain, tactless observations, tagged earnest vaguaries, healthy boundaries, if I had a hammer, loving bluntness on 13 October, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I had not realized that “loving bluntness” was in common use as description of behavior or style of speaking. I guess it’s harsher than “loving kindness”, but still has some religious echos, at least that’s what I gather from the sorts of sites where the description is used.
A phrase that is certainly more common [...]
And from the opposite end of the arts spectrum..
Posted in tactless observations on 13 October, 2009 | 3 Comments »
The closest thing to the FAIL blog for craft items: Regretsy.com
I am not surprised, however, to hear that crafters wanted the images there to link back to their online shops. Publicity is publicity [although in the case of some of the regrettable items, it's 'pube-licity' of the sort that shouldn't be on your screen at [...]
A thought about mythos and logos
Posted in Backstory, tagged God, ideas, Karen Armstrong, logos, mythos, theology on 11 October, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Courtesy of Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God:
“A myth was never intended as an accurate account of a historical event; it was something that had in some sense happened once but that also happens all the time.”
For future food reference
Posted in Food, travel, tagged cardamom tea with mint on 11 October, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Cardamom tea, brewed with fresh mint leaves in the water: very tasty. But where to find good cardamom tea outside a Lebanese restaurant?
That’s no butterfly — that’s punctuation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged butterflies eat figs, figs, insects, learn something new everyday, question mark butterflies, wildlife on 9 October, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Answer to mystery butterfly what likes roosting in the fig trees and feeding on damaged fruits: It’s a Question Mark!
You can imagine how this warms my rhetorical heart…
What it is I’m waiting for
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bees, drunken butterflies, figs, home life, these words do not qualify as poetry and I know this, waiting on 7 October, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Here already are the cats,
And the basil,
And the figs,
And the evening darkness interrupted by a waning Moon.
Dinner is over
Dinner is ‘NOT YET’
Leftovers soon to be pounced upon
We wait for something like a bee
Buzzing down side streets
Veering slightly askew
To land in the driveway.
